Grammatical Intricacy on
Students’ Writing
Nadiah Ma’mun
nadiah_makmun@walisongo.ac.id
English Education Department UIN Walisongo Semarang
Abstract
Grammatical intricacy refers to how often a clause complex in a text in comparison with simple clauses. It is accepted that any text has a different level of intricacy (complexity). This is all related to how much information is introduced in a clause complex which can contain more than one simple clause. Classiication of clauses (sen-tences) is applicable to the determination of grammatical intricacy (complexity) of a text. If in a text there are more clause complexes than simple clauses, it can be said that the text is more complex in the sense that it presents more information in a condensed way. Consequently, the learners are potential to encounter problems. The concept of this article only focuses on the paratactic clause, hy-potactic clause construction and the combination among clause constructions used by students.
Keywords: Grammatical intricacy, clause complex and students
Introduction
Writing is one of language skills, it is both physical and cogni-tive in which the writer is required to produce a number of variables that consist of word, spelling, sentence structure, punctuation, etc in order to make possible transmission of messages. Alice Ochima states “Writing is a progressive activity. This means that when you irst write
something down, you have already been thinking aboutwhat you are going to say
and how you are going to say it. Then after you have inished writing, you read
over what you have written and make changes and corrections. Therefore, writing is never one step actions: it is a process that has several steps (Alice, 1997).
Writing is a process of discovering and organizing ideas, put-ting them on paper, and revising them. Wriput-ting is the hardest skill for almost everyone who is learning English. They are confronted with a lot of dificulties to transfer idea and construct some clauses in a written text. In writing any kind of text, we need complex gram-mar to express the idea comprehensively. Having a good writing, the students must know well how to construct some clauses in written text, in order that the students’ writing may develop well and com-pletely.
Argumentative text is one of the genres that student must learn in genre based writing course. Argumentative text requires the ability of the author to show that he makes conclusions according to deinite facts and not on personal assumptions only.
The researcher observes the argumentative text of English de-partment students in genre based writing course she teaches. She found out simple clauses in them. For example; “Every human had been destined by Allah to have a coupe. A man is for woman. They connected by a holy ijab. Marriage is a half of Iman in Islamic side”. From the
exam-ple above, actually it consists of some sentences that can be made into one sentence that consists of some clauses. It should change the simple clause to complex clause that consists of hypotactic or parataxis clause. For example, “… Every human had been destined by Allah to have a couple/ and / a man and woman is connected by a holy ijab/”.
It is called the paratactic clause construction, since there are two clauses connected by connecter of ‘and’.
“Recently/, there are many couples/ that have a marriage/ when they are still young. There are also many reasons/ that caused their marriage. Those who be-lieve/ that marry /when people are still young is better have some reasons. They argue/ that it will be able to avoid free sex”. As shown the example above,
there are eight hypotactic clauses construction used by students, which consists of four independent clauses and four dependent clauses. It indicates that students have understood the construction the hypotactic and comprehended how to use the clause construc-tion in writing.
The feature of grammatical simplicity characterizes that written language tend to use few clauses per sentence (Halliday 1994). Grammatical intricacy relates to the number of sentenc-es in the text. Writing can be dificult even in our own language, in a new language, writing can be even more dificult. In the fact Students tend to use some grammatical simplicity in their writing. The simple clauses are usually found by the researcher in the stu-dents writing. This research will focus on grammatical intricacy. And the sub focus of the research is the clause complex that consists of parataxis and hypo taxis on the students writing of argumentative text. It is very important for students to make their writing in a total construction.
The writer uses content analysis with the steps according to Functional Grammar of Halliday (1995). This article writes the grammatical intricacy on students writing descriptively. The mate-rials as the source of data used for analysis will be the writings from the fourth semester of English Department students UIN Walison-go Semarang. The data of this study is the clause complex from the writings of the fourth semester students of English Depart-ment of UIN Walisongo. This analysis concentrates on measuring grammatical intricacy of texts as well as on studying the construction of the clauses complex.
The method of collecting data uses text observation con-taining clause complex and the technique of the collecting data uses taking note (simak , catat, Sudaryanto, 2015: 206-2010). The
the construction of clauses complex made by students. The various kinds of clause complex made by the students and the complex-ity of the clauses made the writer categorize and subdivide them. The categories chosen are created by Halliday (1995: 81-101). The categories of clauses and clause complexes are divided into taxis (parataxis & hypostasis) and categories of embedded clauses.
Review of the Related Literature 1. Previous Research
a. Lexical Density and Grammatical Intricacy of English Aca-demic Writings Written By Native Speaker and Non-Native Speaker
The study shows similarities and differences of character-istic features of academic writing written by NNS and NS. The similarities deal with the scores of lexical density and gram-matical intricacy. Both academic writings have more or less similar scores of lexical density and grammatical intricacy. This indicates that both academic writings have the characteristics of a written text. The differences deal with the clause actor, clause process, and nominalization. In using clauses, NNS uses more human actors and action processes which do not show that characteristics of a written text. On the other hand, NS uses more abstract actors and relational processes in his clauses that make the writing more formal. Dealing with nominaliza-tion the informanominaliza-tion communicated in the text through nomi-nal group, NS uses more words in his nominomi-nal group, although the functional elements used to make the nominal groups are nearly the same. They generally use deictic, classiier, and quali-ier in prepositional phrase or relative clause (Sunardi, Journal of UDINUS, Volume 10, No.3 September 2010).
2. Theoretical Framework
a. Deinition of Writing
lot of dificulties to transfer thought and idea in written form. That’s why teacher must be to provoke student engagement with material which is relevant and involving. The problems faced in the class are students have dificulties to build and develop their ideas, choose the right dictions, and use the grammar so they feel dificult to arrange what they think into a paragraph.
b. Grammatical intricacy
Grammatical intricacy refers to how often a clause complex appears in a text in comparison with simple clauses. It is accept-ed that any text has a different level of intricacy (complexity). This is all related to how much information is introduced in a clause complex which can contain more than one simple clause. Classiication of clauses (sentences) is applicable to the deter-mination of grammatical intricacy (complexity) of a text. If in a text there are more clause complexes than simple clauses, it can be said that the text ismore complex inthesense that it presents more information in a condensed way. Consequently,thelearners are potential to encounter problems.
Grammatical intricacy is important to beuncovered because a text is said to be dificult because of the intricacy oinforma-tion. A simple clause is easier to understand in the sense that the amount of information presented is less than that of a clause complex. In other words, a clause complex as indicated in func-tional grammar contains more information than a simple clause. To understand the total meaning of a text, the types of clauses in English must be familiar to the students.
It often occurs that students cannot understand a clause complex as they cannot identify the subject and predicate. In fact, no matter how long a clause is, they should be able to rec-ognize the subject and predicate because there two elements of grammar which create certain meanings.
by showing its relation to other things or events. A person, for instance, can learn English because the language is very impor-tant. He then studies it at a course and reads many books to get information. This man as the subject of the sentence should be described in details, which means that there is intricacy of information.
In this case the levels of GI counted by analyzing High and Low level of grammatical intricacy (complexity) of a text. If the number of clause complex is more dominant than simple sen-tence in a text, it means that the text has high level of GI, and contrary if the number of clause complex is lower than simple sentence, it’s mean that the text has low GI.
The level of intricacy can be found by inding the ratio be-tween the simple clauses and clause complexes in the real analy-sis, a simple clause may be regarded as consisting subject and predicate. Every type of clauses has a different level of dificul-ty. This is true of the clauses which contain a different amount of information. Various studies showed that clause complexes, for instance, clause complexes are more dificult to process than simple clauses, relecting their relatively greater intricacy as de-ined by (Slobin, 1979 5’). In relation to understanding clauses in a reading text, the levels of knowledge and skill must constantly be called upon in apparently simple and effortless course of un-derstanding the message. Simply, a brief comparison will give more comprehension in analyzing the levels of GI. The texts are taken from different sources.
Text 1
Studies show that students from low socioeconomic fami-lies often suffer conditions such as inadequate shelter, inferi-or food, unsafe neighbinferi-orhood, and substandard schools that af-fect their emotional and social well-being.
CC (Clause Complex) analysis;
in-ferior food, unsafe neighborhood//, students from low socio-economic families often suffer [from] substandard schools that [[substandard schools]] affect their emotional and social well-being.///
Text 2
Myths and stereotypes about the ideal family can inlu-ence teacher expectations and attitudes regarding the abil-ity of students to learn and behave.
CC (Clause Complex) analysis;
///Myths and stereotypes about the ideal family can inlu-ence teacher expectations //and attitudes regarding the ability of students //to learn and behave./By acknowledging and respecting wide spectrum of families, teachers can discourage prejudgment. They can take an active role in reinforcing the vital link between home and school (Lack of CC or no CC).
As shown in the example, the 3 texts has 3 LGI (lev-els of GI); (1. High LGI, 2.Medium LGI, 3. Low LGI). Halliday (2004) states: typically, written language becomes com-plex by being lexically dense: it packs a large number of lexi-cal items into each clause; where as spoken language be-comes complex by being grammatically intricate: it builds up elaborate clause complexes out of parataxis and hypotax-is (p. 654).
Clause complexes
claus-es; the relationship of equality and independence is called parataxis (Example I), and the relationship of dependency is called hypotaxis (Example II).
(II) Choose your topic, || and organize your information. (II) Look at your listeners || when you speak.
α β
The logico-semantic system shows how clauses are related to each other: through projection or expansion. When what is jected is a thought, it is called idea (example I). When what is pro-jected is speech, it is called locution (Example II).
Decide || what your purpose and audience will be
α β
They might ask themselves || why an event made them feel in a certain way.
α β
Expansion can be of three different types: elaboration (when one clause restates or exempliies another one, Example I), ex-tension (when one clause adds some new information to another clause, Example II ), and enhancement (when one clause develops another clause in some way, Example III).
A synonym,
<<or word that has meaning>> may come after the example sentence
1 <<+2>>
Look at your listener || and organize your information
CLAUSE
System of clause complex (from Eggins, 2004, p. 259)
Any clause chooses both for taxis and logico-semantic rela-tions. The choice is “either or”: a type of relations between clauses can be either paratactic, or hypotactic. The same is true for logico-semantic relations: a clause either projects (or is being projected), or expands (or is being expanded). The dificulties in the analysis will arise mainly when the text divide into clauses because in addition to ranking clauses, dependent or independent, each text contained a large number of embedded clauses. Embedding is deined by Hal-liday (2004) as “a semogenic mechanism whereby a clause or phrase comes to function as a constituent within the structure of a group, which itself is a constituent of a clause.
Embedded Vs. Non-Embedded Clauses
Embedding is a mechanism whereby an element comes to func-tion within the structure of a group, which itself is a constituent of a clause (Gerot and Wignell, 1994:87). To see the contrast of embedded and non-embedded can be seen by the following clauses:
Non-embedded: it’s my own invention--to keep dodol in Em-bedded : I needed something [[to keep dodol in]]
In the irst example, to keep dodol in not embedded. In-stead, it is a dependent clause, one which adds a kind of after-thought. In the second, [[to keep dodol in]] is embedded, and there-fore, does not function as a dependent clause in its own right, but rather acts more like a word qualifying or modifying the mean-ing of somethmean-ing. Let’s see other example taken from (Gerot and Wignell); *Non embedded: the prisoner, who hid in the thicket escaped. *Embedded : the prisoner who hid in the thicket escaped, but his ac-complice was recaptured.
Here the irst who hid in the ticket is not embedded; it is a de-pendent clause which adds more information about the event under discussion. There are two pieces of information in this clause com-plex: ‘the prisoner escaped’ and ‘said prisoner hid in the thicket’. In the second clause complex who hid in the thicket is embedded. This
1. Choose a way [[to share your writing]].
2. [[Using different kinds of type and different col-ors]] makes writing
3. [[fun to read.]]
Conclusion
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